Movements and Decline of Large Quoddy Herring

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Abstract
Development, beginning in 1876, of heavy fishing for "sardines", the yearling herring available in and near Passamaquoddy Bay between New Brunswick and Maine, was followed by decrease in numbers of older fish. The very local and very fat "Quoddy River" herring disappeared promptly. The immense accumulated stock of large spawning herring lasted ten years or more after recruitment was thus greatly reduced. This stock was being coincidently shifted from the Quoddy region, apparently owing to reduced rainfall.The normal seasonal shifting of these fish is between the outer side of Grand Manan Island in summer and near the mainland in winter. In midsummer of 1877, their numbers at Grand Manan began to diminish and for four years remained very low. They were as abundant as ever in winter near the mainland, but farther from shore and more numerous eastward. They appeared inside the Reversing Falls of the Saint John River, whose outflow goes to Grand Manan, in all four years of their scarcity at Grand Manan. Large herring appeared in unexampled numbers at Quaco, east of Saint John, from 1878 to 1881 and then declined. A movement across the Bay to Nova Scotia became evident by a marked rise in Annapolis County in 1881, and, farther in, in Kings County in 1882, in each case lasting for four years and not going beyond the mouth of Minas Channel. These fish seemed to make the circuit of the Bay, affecting catches at its head and on to the New Brunswick side, with return to the Saint John outflow by 1884. Farther out, other lots reached the Nova Scotian coast from Digby to Cape Sable in 1881, remained high for four years and then declined. By 1891, catches everywhere were down to a very low level, indicating exhaustion of the stock.

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